See His Gospel, Live Out Grace

There’s a purple sticky note that’s been a long-term resident of my desk top. It’s a little maxim of Ann Voskamp’s (if you aren’t familiar with her work, check out her website). It reads: Inhale Gospel. Exhale Grace in this place.

Breathe in the Gospel, of the unmerited forgiveness and unconditional grace of God, poured out on us through Jesus. Rest in the Truth of being chosen and adopted as a child of God and an inheritor of his promises. Lavish love, merciful justice, undeserved favor.

And breathe out Grace on those in the space around you. Grace for foibles and faults, for the ways you’ve been sinned against and slighted. Grace for the moments another’s imperfect humanity rubs rough against us. Letting go of the need to get even or the desire to keep a grudge. Forfeiting justified angst or repayment. In the fashion of our Savior, pouring unmerited forgiveness, unconditional grace, undeserved favor.

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What I Learned From a Sheep Named Buster: Lessons in Discernment

The sheep hear [the shepherd’s] voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out … and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers. … My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.

– John 10:3-5, 27

When I was a child, we lived across the road from a sheep farm. Every spring, fluffy white lambs ran through the fields. Bleating sheep was part of the natural symphony of our country home. (Let me comment here that sheep do not make a delicate baa-ing sound, as some would lead you to believe. Delicate is not even close to the word I would use to describe it. Unfortunately, I cannot perform my best bellowing sheep imitation for you. But I digress…)

During those years, my dad chased many a sheep that had escaped through the old wooden fence around their pasture, and my mom and I would watch him and our neighbor, Bill, heaving on the escapees’ rear-ends to push them back into the safety of the pen. Those bits you hear about sheep being stubborn? We were eyewitnesses to it.

One sheep we will never forget. His name was Buster. I have a photo of my young self, my arms wrapped around him. I’m probably ten or eleven, in the glasses and braces stage of life. When Buster’s mother died during the birthing process, Bill took the small lamb into his home. He was bottle-fed and kept inside more like a dog than a farm animal. And this early experience gave Buster, let’s say, an interesting personality. He was just as stubborn as the others, but his familiarity and perhaps something akin to affection gave him particular audacity. Our poor neighbor was knocked a few too many times onto his elderly hips by Buster’s head butt of greeting or protest. But Buster knew his name—Bill had only to go to the edge of the barn, and yell Buster’s name, and before long, you would see him making his way over the pasture to where we stood. In spite of his stubbornness, he knew his name, and he knew the sound of the one who called him.

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"I Know the Plans I Have For You": Jeremiah 29:11 and the Global Church

Do you ever watch the news or overhear a conversation and think “Oh Lord, what is happening to your church?” I find myself in this position particularly when I hear of ways that the Gospel is being distorted into Law and bondage, and when what should be the “hospital for sinners” is turned into an exclusive club of the self-righteous and proud.

If I’m being honest, I often grow discouraged when I look at the state of the church in America. As a general trajectory, those who call themselves Christians in this country are compromising on mission for the sake of popularity, emphasizing moralism over Gospel transformation, abandoning basic biblical ethics and beliefs, undermining the authority of Scripture, and giving into hypocrisy. I’m sure many of you have seen these things in your own experience and on the news. We cringe, we weep, and we defeatedly accept it’s “just the way things are.”

It can become easy to bash the church—either the whole or our current individual one—criticizing its flaws and imperfections. We pick up and leave because such-and-such a church wasn’t “meeting our needs.” We give up on corporate fellowship entirely, and consider occasional online sermons, walks in the woods, or our own personal piety sufficient.

And so we abandon the Bride of Christ—and run her name through the muck.

But the discouraging things we see are not the end of the story. 

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Ballet Lessons and Carthusian Monks: Pirouette 101

The cross is steady while the world is turning.

- Bruno of Cologne, founder of Carthusian monastic order

I remember ballet lessons as a child. Pale pink ballet shoes, with a small ribbon bow above my toes. Golden wood floors running to mirror-lined walls. And me, stretched out on the floor, self-consciously pressing my unflexible limbs into something remotely resembling a split.

I never felt myself to be particularly graceful. I was the strange child always in dress-up clothes, living in my own imaginary world, dragging my faithful golden retriever along for the adventure I’d concocted. I well-earned my nickname “ice pack” with countless bangs, scrapes, bruises, though, miraculously no broken bones.

So the world of the dance studio was a new one to me. 

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Kinship and Embrace: Or Why My Neighborhood Isn't Sketchy

Scott and I recently moved to New Hampshire, what we fondly refer to as “the land of the free,” to the outskirts of a cute up-and-coming town. At some point in the process, I heard someone say that we were in a “sketchy” area. Why? Because down the road from us is a “club” which hosts meetings for people in addiction recovery.

Every day, a few minutes before noon, I see cars parking along our street, and I watch as women and men, some arriving in pairs, begin the walk down the hill. Apparently this person was convinced the recovery center would pull in “all sorts”—thus the “sketchy” label. But if you watch the people walking to their AA meetings, or returning to their cars, they look very normal. Some of them drive nice cars. Many are dressed in business attire, clearly slipping away from work on a lunch break. Just normal people, putting one foot in front of the other, profoundly aware of their weaknesses, fighting to put (or keep) their lives together. When I see them, I don’t think they’re “sketchy”—I think they’re brave.

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